A database is a structured collection of data stored within a computing system. A database may be considered as having a number of records, where each record may have a value for each of a number of different fields. For instance, a relational database may be considered as being organized as a grid with multiple rows and one or more columns. Each row typically corresponds to a record, and each column typically corresponds to a field.
As a representative example, a database may store information regarding a number of different people. Each record of the database corresponds to a different person. There may be fields of the database corresponding to first name, last name, street address, city, state, zip code, and phone number. Thus, a given record has values corresponding to the fields. For example, a given record may have the values “John,” “Smith,” “1210 Main St,” “New York,” “N.Y.,” “10027,” and “212-555-1234” for the database fields.